Seeking the simultaneously socially committed, successful, and employable engineering student

Paper in proceeding, 2022

In this work in progress research paper, we ask what is required of a 21st century engineer. The study focuses on a new program of cross-disciplinary courses set to prepare engineering students for work-life and societal challenges, as well as addressing diversity among engineering students. We study the information material used in recruiting students to the program, which is organized in parallel to the students' ordinary engineering programs. Using a discourse analytical approach, by analyzing the rationales used for urging students to join, and what broader interpretative repertoires these rationales draw from, we aim to highlight what is framed as important and successful for today's engineering students. Preliminary results show how prospective students are described as simultaneously especially employable and especially committed, for example to solving real problems related to climate change. The program is marketed to students in ways that draws on repertoires of progressivism, neo-liberalism, and sustainability, as well as the importance of collaboration and teamwork for employability. In earlier research, these kinds of repertoires have been shown to both open up and limit student possibilities to identify as authentic engineers along intersecting lines of gender, social class, age and ethnicity. Importantly, some of them function as fluid boundary repertoires which allows contradictory values to be put together in the picture of the successful contemporary engineering student.